/ 



0HflTI0]4 



BY 



GEN. H.V. BOYNTON, 



DELIVERED AT 



GUlliFOl?D BATTliE Gf^OUj^D, 



duly 4, 1900. 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

GUILFORD BATTLE GROUND COMPANY, 

GREENSBORO, N, C, 



General Boynton's Address. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I come before you, a son of Massachusetts, having an an- 
cestor among the Minute Men called out by the battle of Lex- 
ington, and another, a private soldier at Bunker Hill. I do 
not mention these things by way of self laudation — far, very 
far from that — but solely to give greater point and stronger 
emphasis to what it will be my pleasure to say in regard to 
the still earlier part played by North Carolina in the great 
drama of the Revolution. 

Every American should esteem it high privilege to take 
part in public exercises wherever this day commemorating 
our National Independence is celebrated. It is an exception- 
al privilege, as well as high honor, to so participate in this 
Commonwealth of North Carolina, upon whose soil the first 
battle against unjust taxation and other Brittish oppression 
was fought in the Colonial Era, where the first Declaration 
of Independence was issued, and especially upon this mem- 
orable battle ground —the high water mark of foreign inva- 
sion — from which that tide ebbed swiftly away to British sur- 
render at Yorktown. Behold the mile posts, which history has 
set up along that shining way which led straight on to Ameri- 
can Independence — Alamance, Mecklenburg, Moore's Creek, 
King's Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Yorktown! 

In celebrating the Revolutionary period, we should not for- 
get that the fires of patriotism, of defiance to British authority 
and of independence burned brightly in North Carolina long 
before Lexington, or Concord, or Bunker Hill; or that the 
last Legislature of this state to recognize royal authority was 
that of March 1774. 

Today we look back to that Independence which this bat- 
tlefield did so much to secure, and glory in the victory here 



2 Guilford Battle Ground, July 4., ipoo. 

achieved — for in every sense it was a tractical victory, and 
the immediate forerunner of the enemy's final defeat. Turn- 
ing from the past to the present, we find the same flag for 
which our fathers jointly fought, now floating, by the joint 
efforts of all their sons, in perpetual sunlight — for on its folds 
the sun no longer sets. 

To my mind, if there had been nothing more accomplished 
by the war with Spain than the rallying of all sections again, 
with one accord, under the one flag, to do battle for the na- 
tion, this one momentous result would have been worth the 
cost of the war, even the fearful cost of our soldier's lives. 
But, without intent on the part of man, and so, we must be- 
lieve, in the Providence of God, something even beyond the 
final and effective welding of the sections has come to the na- 
tion. That flag has been planted on the other side of the 
earth — planted to stay — and our country finds itself, through 
the marvelous and well-nigh miraculous work of our Army 
and Navy, in the very front rank of the world powers. Such 
is the fruitage from the good seed sown on this and the other 
famous battlefields of the Rovolution. 

While our Civil War was raging it looked at times as if no 
sun could rise again for either section over that midnight of 
the Republic. But looking back on it calmly, as we can do 
now, it sometimes seems to me that this was but a course in 
the school of war through which the nation was taken by an 
overruling Power to teach Americans on each side, by pit- 
ting each against Americans, that nothing in the line of sol- 
dierly endeavor could surpass American fighting and thus fit 
this re-united Republic to hold its own among the nations 
in this day of wider horizons, of new opportunities, and graver 
duties. From that school of the Civil War we have been 
graduated a giant military power. With this added strength 
we are starting — hand in hand, thank God, hand in hand 
again — to give to distant lands and peoples the blessings won 
on the battlefields of the Rovolution. In this there is no 
trace of aggression, or of imperialism — that Boston night- 
mare of a (qw prophets of evil — or anything except an honest 



f 



P 



6 r 03 



Guilford Battle Ground, July ^, i^oo. j 

effort and determination to meet new duties with unflinching 
courage. 

This park stands for more than the Battle of Guilford 
Courthouse. It represents the culmination of mountain and 
over-mountain effort — largely North Carolina effort, and bril- 
liantly successful effort to check the British invasion of the 
South. This monument represents and recalls not only all 
that was glorious in matrial deeds and the sufferings of the 
patriot people of the Revolution, but it recalls to everlasting 
remembrance the infamy of England. It tells to all who be- 
hold, and will tell to all who come after us, the shameful 
story that the invasion of the Carolinas was deliberately plan- 
ned as one of murder and rapine, and every cruelty which 
savage war could inflict. It was work of this kind, wholly 
outside of any rules of warfare, except such as obtain among 
savages, that was put into the hands of Cornwallis to ex- 
ecute, who, in turn, committed the consummation of the pre- 
determined atrocities and butcheries to the willing hands of 
Tarleton and Ferguson. Whatever these tools were guilty 
of — and of what in the list of blackest crimes were they not 
guilty — Cornwallis was an accessory before the facts, and an 
applauding and confirming principal after the crimes. 

This monument is for North Carolina the brilliant point on 
the gilded dome of our independence — seen far and wide, a 
gleaming out of the past that will never grow dim. Think of 
the situation which it commemorates! You are all familiar 
with it ; but standing here on holy ground, to refresh our 
minds with the cheif facts is to lay fresh fuel on the altars of 
patriotism. South Carolina had been overrun; organized re- 
sistance had ceased; their patriots were being hunted like 
wild bfeasts, and murdered wherever found; North Carolina's 
regulars had been captured through the imbecility of General 
Lincoln, defending Charleston; the enemy was resting along 
the southern boundaries of this state awaiting the ripening of 
the grain crops to advance and subdue it. North Carolina 
had only her militia with which to resist invasion. All along 
her southern horizon the sky was as black as midnight in a 



^ Guilford Battle Ground, July ^, i^oo. 

tropical storm. Did North Carolina quail? Let King's 
Mountain answer! Let Cowpens testify! Let this battlefield 
respond. 

In spite of this blackness of darkness the Old North State 
stood defiant. Without regulars, and with a scattered militia, 
citizens, singly and in groups, fired upon and harassed all 
hostile bands and held the State steady until it could assem- 
ble its scant resources and rally such outside aid as could be 
reached. There is no more honorable chapter in Revolu- 
tionary history than that which covers the time from Corn- 
wallis' appearance on the southern border of North Carolina 
until the fires of patriotism flamed high on King's Mountain, 
fed with the wreck of Ferguson's camp and army. 

There is nothing finer in the romance of war than the 
gathering of those "over-mountain" North Carolinians from 
what in part is now Tennessee, to hurl back the too confident 
invader. They came with the scant outfit of hardy moun- 
taineers, but with those deadly Deckard rifles which they 
soon made the terror of British regulars. They hailed from 
regions of which Cornwallis knew nothing, and from settle- 
ments beyond the mountains the very names of which he had 
never heard. They were rallied by messengers which must 
have recalled to many of those Scotch-Irish men the speeding 
of the Fiery Cross to rally the clans in the Scottish Highlands. 
They set out with prayer, invoking "the sword of the Lord 
and of Gideon." At an appointed rendezvous they met Wil- 
liam Campbell from Virginia; and South Carolina and Georgia 
from their condition of sore distress subsequently contributed 
an honorable quota. The march was through the snows of 
the mountains, but in good time they were in the vicinity of 
Ferguson, who had sent threats of hanging their leaders, and 
devastating their over-mountain region. 

The country is familiar with the history of King's Moun- 
tain. Its fame is fadeless on the pages of Revolutionary story. 
There was no more skillfully planned, more courageously 
fought, or more decisive battlefield in all the war. And the 
one and unpretentious monument which North Carolina has 



Guilford Battle Ground, July ^, IQOO. ^ 

erected on that distant mountain top upon her southern border 
marks one of the most important epochs of the war. 

Then came Cowpens with its crushing defeat of Tarleton, 
that twin comrade of Ferguson in diabolism. In the glory of 
that day the Maryland line participated with the soldiers from 
the states which were represented in the extermination of 
Ferguson's force. And here also North Carolina valor shone 
resplendent. Invasion was crippled. Patriotism in all the 
South had taken heart again. Cornwallis was in a desperate 
mood. And thus he drew -on to his fate at this field upon 
which it is our privalige to assemble today. 

You know the history of this battle well. It would be 
superfluous for me to rehearse its details. For Lord Cornwallis 
it was, in a millitary sense, one of those victories which in 
every essential element was sore defeat. While he occupied 
the field, he had neither destroyed nor disorganized, nor 
discouraged the patriot army. For him the limits of success- 
ful career had been reached. From Guilford Courthouse he 
fled to his doom. You all know the result — retreat, stout 
struggle against fatal conditions, but final surrender. The 
star of his fortunes passed its zenith at King's Mountain ; it 
was stooping torward the west at Cowpens ; it was in the 
mists of the horizon when the battle ended here, and a little 
later, and as the direct result of this battle, it plunged to 
darkest setting. 

Tarleton, in his carefully written history, describes Guilford 
as a stubbornly contested field where " victory alternately 
presided over each army," and, further, as "a victory which, 
however splendid and honorable to the general and the troops, 
was not useful or advantageous to Great Britain." 

Fox in the British Parliament, declared that the victory 
was with the Americans, for, he argued, that in the face of 
recognized defeat Cornwallis could have done no more than 
he did do, namely, leave the field and flee to the coast, as he 
was forced to do. 

There is one false tradition of this field which the citizens 
of North Carolina properly combat and deny, and that is the 



6 Guiljord Battle Ground^ July ^, ipoo. 

charge that the militia of their state, having been placed in 
the front line, ran without engaging the enemy. It is a story- 
written twenty-eight years after the battle, from memory 
alone, by a writer since shown to have promulgated many 
erroneous statements. 

To your fellow citizen, Hon. David Schenck, the state of 
North Carolina, and all students of Revolutionary history 
as well, owe a heavy debt of gratitude for the masterly dem- 
onstration of the falsity of this long current fiction. Equally 
are the state and the country indebted to him for every part 
of that brilliant and exhaustive history in which he sets forth 
the splendid part which unconquered and unconquerable 
North Carolina played throughout the Revolutionary War. 

As to Guilford, the evidence which he presents from eye- 
witnesses, and contemporary reports, is conclusive that the 
North Carolina militia were placed in the front line, and or- 
dered by General Greene in person to deliver two rounds and 
then retire behind the second line. This they did, firing their 
first volley with terrible effect at i 50 yards, and the second 
at forty yards, cooly resting their rifles on a fence and taking 
deadly aim. The testimony of British officers establishes 
this, even without the equally conclusive and impartial testi- 
mony from patriot sources. The hasty retreat behind the 
second line, after the full execution of their orders, affords 
no justification for the erroneous and cruel contributions to 
alleged history to which it gave rise. The posting of this 
line of riflemen without bayonets, the orders given it, the 
quick retreat behind the line of regulars in the face of a bay- 
onet charge of the enemy need no defence when examined 
from a military point of view alone. 

Time will not permit more than this general reference to 
the chief historical injustice done those who opened this battle 
of Guilford Courthouse with such deadly effect. Every North 
Carolinian, and every student of history, who has not already 
done so, should procure and carefully read the exhaustive 
and reliable work of Hon. David Schenck, in which the proofs 
of heroic conduct appear clear as noonday. 



1 



Guilford Battle Ground, Jidy 4, igoo. 7 

Nothing is more exasperating to the student of our military- 
history than the persistence with which erroneous statements, 
born of the confusion and uncertainty of the field of battle, 
are reproduced by careless writers and given continuing life. 
As this feature of what passes for history has a direct bearing 
upon the injustice done North Carolina soldiers so long ago, 
and still repeated in such histories as those of Washington 
Irving and General Carrington, and in leading encyclopedias, 
a few modern instances may not prove without interest or 
pertinence here. 

In describing the battle of Missionary Ridge, General Grant 
and General Sherman in their Memoirs ; General Badeau in 
his " Military History of Grant" (which, it is claimed by 
Badeau, was revised by Grant) and a host of writers of lesser 
note, insist that General Sherman carried the north end of 
Missionary Ridge to the Tunnel. Not only is this not true 
for the date given in all these histories, but it is not true for 
any other date, since Sherman throughout the battle did not 
succeed in carrying any part of Missionary Ridge. And yet, 
at the time these histories were written, there were hundreds 
of officers and thousands of soldiers living who were eye- 
witnesses of Sherman's attacks and failures. And a small 
army of them is living yet. 

Take another case. Gen. James Grant Wilson — not the 
Cavalry Wilson — is a military oracle of Philadelphia and 
New York publishers. He has edited volume after volume 
of military history touching the Civil War. Not a single one 
has yet appeared without grave errors which the most casual 
examination of the published official records would have 
enabled him to avoid. Of a certain movement in the battle 
of Chattanooga, in a volume wholly his own, he writes : 

" At I P. M. Sherman gave the order to advance on Mission- 
ary Ridge. With a hundred guns playing upon them, and 
with as many answering from the Federal Heights, his com- 
mand gained the foot of the first advanced spur of Missionary 
Ridge, climbed it through storms of shot and shell, beat back 
the bayonets that wreathed its top, clambered over the hot 



8 Guilford Battle Ground, July 4, ipoo. 

muzzles of the guns upon its summit, and at half past three 
planted their banners there, a step nearer the superior heights 
frowning above." 

Now what do you suppose the facts to be, which the official 
record clearly discloses, and to which there are a cloud 
of living witnesses ? Simply these, that the spur indicated 
was not occupied by the enemy, and not a shot was fired 
from it, or at it, by rifle or cannon, during the movement 
which Wilson thus describes in the hackneyed phrases of 
blood and thunder war literature. Not only was there no 
such occurence in front of this part of the line, but there was 
nothing like it for him on any part of the line. Sherman, 
unopposed and unobstructed, marched up to some unoccupied 
hills, detached from Missionary Ridge, and established his 
lines there. All the rest is the stage thunder and sheet-iron 
lighting of the military novelist. His battle was on the next 
day. 

Prof. Coppee, a West Point man, and a Professor at Lehigh 
University, in his life of General Thomas presents the second 
day's battle at Chicamauga as the first; and further declares 
that during a certain night the whole of the Army of the Cum- 
berland was busy entrenching its lines for the coming battle, 
when, as a matter of fact, the entire army was marching that 
night from sunset to sunrise, and not a shovelful of earth was 
thrown by it throughout the whole battle. 

Even the highly praised histories of Prof. J. F. Rhodes, Gen. 
James Schouler and John Fiske — all profeshional historians 
of accepted standing — present instances of error as glaring as 
these. 

The application of these facts to the perversion of Guilford's 
history is plain. If celebrated historians in this day, sur- 
rounded with credible witnesses, and with every means of test- 
ing their work at command, commit such egregrious errors 
where error is utterly inexcusable, it will not seem strange 
that this unjust charge against North Carolina troops, once 
launched into the currant of alleged history, should have lived 
so long without refutation. 



I 



Guilford Battle Ground, July y, I goo g 

North CaroKna students of her military history in all wars 
should be more persistent in setting forth the proof of the 
gross error in regard to the action of her soldiers on this field 
because of the admitted record of their splendid fighting else- 
where. Let me cite you a few figures of the Civil War: 

The famous 26th North Carolina, of Pettigrew's Brigade of 
Heth's Division holds the record of the severest regimental 
loss during the war. It went into the Battle of Gettysburg 
over 800 strong. It lost 588 killed and wounded. On the 
third day it mustered only 216 for duty, and the next but 80. 
Besides the killed and wounded there were 120 missing, many 
of whom were among the fallen. The percentage of killed 
and wounded was 72 and of casualties 86. This was ten times 
the percentage of the total loss of the American army at San- 
tiago, which was little over 8 percent., including El Caney, 
Aguadores and San Juan Hill. On the same day at Gettys- 
burg in the same brigade, Company C, nth North Carolina, 
lost two officers killed, and 34 men wounded out of 38. In the 
third day's fight Captain Bird, of this company, with the four 
men left, went into the Longstreet charge, the color bearer 
was shot, and the Captain brought out the flag. 

The Second North Carolina Battalion lost 63.7 per cent, at 
Gettysburg; the 27th at Antietam 61.2 per cent; the i8th, in 
the Seven Day's battle, 56.5 per cent., and the 7th 56.2 per 
cent. The casualties of the 4th, at Seven Pines, reached 54.4 
per cent ; the 3d, at Gettysburg, 50 per cent, without count- 
ing 51 missing, most of whom were killed or wounded. For 
Ramseur's North Carolina Brigade, at Chancellorsville, the 
loss was 52.2 per cent. In all these cases the North Carolina 
organizations named lost more than every second man. 

Taking the war through, the records show that North Caro- 
lina lost in killed over 17 per cent, of her entire population of 
military age. 

Let us reason backward from the splendid fighting stand- 
ards which these figures establish. Could such a military 
population spring from sires who failed in duty on battlefields 
of the Revolution .'' 



TO Guilford Battle Ground, July ^, ipoo. 

The Revolutionary epochs in which the citizens of the 
North State were first have already been named — first to re- 
sist unjust taxation by arms ; first to announce formal inde- 
pendence of Great Britain ; first, when the war was on, to 
turn back British invasion of the South, 

Here, on this ground, citizens of North Carolina, organized 
by act of its legislature, again have been first — the first to 
purchase and preserve a battlefield of the Revolution. Speak- 
ing generally, the country has done little toward saving the 
features of its colonial battle grounds from oblivion. Various 
steps have been taken in different parts of the land to mark 
historic points of that seven years' struggle ; but nowhere save 
here, so far as I am informed, has a Revolutionary battlefield 
been bought outright and preserved entire. Bunker Hill has 
its monument — -surrounded by solid blocks of brick and mor- 
tar. There is a bronze Minute Man at Concord, and granite 
tablets on the line of March from Cambridge to Lexington. 

The state of Pennsylvania has saved the camp ground of 
Valley Forge. The Daughters of the American Revolution in 
Connecticut are erecting a historical tablet where Putnam 
took his famous ride, and their sisters in Fredericksburg, Va., 
have resolved to mark all Revolutionary points in that vicin- 
ity. The Government has erected an imposing monument at 
Yorktown. New Jersey has placed a monument on each of 
her fields of note, and some work of this kind has been done 
in New York. These things are well, and deserve the sup- 
port and acclaim of all patriots. 

But how these pale before the more comprehensive pro- 
ject here ! Here also is a monument to mark the field of 
Guilford Courthouse. But how much more than that is here .'' 
The very roads that existed when the battle was on ; the 
open ground across which the opposing lines faced each other; 
the position of the fence from which the North Carolina 
militia delivered those deadly volleys ; the lines of the regu- 
lars in rear of them ; the forest of desperate fighting where 
victory hung long in the balance ; the ravines and ridges 
which saw the close of a battle which gave Corwallis the field, 



Guilford Battle Ground, July ^, igoo. ii 

but at such fearful cost as to prove his complete undoing — all 
here, the framework and the detailed setting of one of the de- 
cisive engagements of the war, all possessed and restored. 
While the Government has reared that noble shaft at York- 
town, it is but half completed work. It will not be finished 
until on this ground, marking the field which n>ade York- 
town possible, it has raised an equally imposing monument 
to tell the preliminary and compelling story of Guilford 
Courthouse to the ages. 

And while waiting for the Government, and rallying all the 
influences which we can command to secure action at its hands, 
I cannot forbear to appeal here and now for more immedi- 
ate aid to a force and power before which modern civilization 
justly bows in homage — woman. The land is full of patriotic 
societies of women. Of these, Colonial Dames, Founders and 
Patriots, Daughters of the American Revolution, Daughters 
of the Revolution, are giving increased attention to the pres- 
ervation of early battle history. If the women of this good 
state would enthusiastically unite to assist in the full marking 
of this field, the time would be short before in every particular 
the work accomplished here would rival in interest and com- 
pleteness everything yet done to preserve the other fields of 
that war. This is a work worthy of the ambition and state 
pride of those women who stand highest in every walk of life. 
There is no nobler history to hand down unimpaired to coming 
generations than the record of North Carolina in the days 
when it bade defiance to British diabolism, incarnate in the 
persons of that trinity of evil, Cornwallis, Tarleton and 
Ferguson. If in the near future the country should hear that 
the women of the state had organized to help in the further 
restoration and preservation of this field, it would feel certain 
that ere long it would be the most interesting point of 
pilgrimige among the Revolutionary fields of the land. 

Such an occasion as this — such as imposing and influential 
gathering, assembled to do honor both to our nationality, and 
to the men who fought on this field to lay its foundations broad 
and deep, should so rekindle reverence for Revolutionary 



12 Guilford Battle Ground, July ^, igoo. 

efifort and sacrifice as to set on foot general and earnest work 
for the preservation of all decisive battle fields of the struggle 
which gave us independence. Especially should this event 
arouse North Carolina to renewed interest in her fields of 
ancient but enduring renown. 

The government is giving wide and absolutely impartial 
attention to the restoration and preservation of the most 
noted battle fields of the Cival War. This involves purchase 
of lands ; the identification and marking of lines of battle ; 
the erection of monuments by the states to regiments and 
batteries ; the placing of guns on iron carriages in every 
fighting position of the batteries ; and historical tablets for 
every army corps, division, brigade and battery engaged. 
This work has been finished at Antietam. It is well advanced 
at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga and Shiloh. It is 
in progress at Vicksburg. Bills have been favorably reported 
in Congress to establish a Military Park at Atlanta; ; and a 
bill for another including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, 
the Wilderness and Spottsylvania has just passed the Senate 
and awaits the action of the House at the coming session. 

The Government has already appropriated a million dollars 
for the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park. Seven 
battlefields are included within its limits, or reached by its 
improved roads. In that portion alone which embraces the 
fighting ground at Chickamauga the Government owns ten 
square miles, and the combined acreage and mileage, includ- 
ing the Georgia and Tennessee divisions, of this park exceeds 
the aggregate area and mileage of all the other military parks 
yet established. Every state which had troops in these bat- 
tles sent a commission to assist the National Commission in 
ascertaining the lines where they fought and deciding upon 
locations for monuments. More than four hundred brigade 
lines of battle have been thus identified with the cordial con- 
currence of all the state commissions, and the veterans of 
each side who have visited the field in great numbers. The 
historical tablets for seven of the brigades set forth the des- 
ignation, and the names of the commanding officers of the 



Guilford Battle Ground, July /, igoo. / 7 

seven North Carolina regiments, together with the command- 
ing officers of the brigades, divisions and corps in which they 
served. Thus there is on this field, preserved on imperishable 
tablets, a record of the organization and the movements in the 
battle of the 29th North Carolina Infantry, Col. Wm. R. 
Creasman commanding ; the 39th, Col. David Coleman ; the 
58th, Col. John B. Palmer ; the 60th, Lieut. -Col. James M. 
Ray and Capt. Jas. T. Werver, and the 6th Calvary, Col. Geo. 
N. Folk. 

In the same way on the Chattanooga field the records of 
the 58th and the 60th, with their commanding officers, are 
again recorded on the tablets there. North Carolina had, and 
I suppose still has, a State Chickamauga Commission. Why 
should she not have one for Guilford Courthouse, and for the 
identification of her other Revolutionary fields, and the pre- 
servation of their history.-* 

Those patriotic citizens who originated and have carried 
forward this park project deserve well not only of their state, 
but of the nation. They have blazed the way along lines of 
action which every state should follow whose soil was glori- 
fied by a Revolutionary battlefield. When the country comes 
to know, as it should be made to know, what they have done 
here, it will be both a revelation and an incentive to similar 
afforts elsewhere. The fame of their work must yet fill the 
land, and the honors which are their due be abundantly be- 
stowed. 

In looking back over the hundred and twenty years that 
have elapsed since British invasion was checked on this field, 
it is natural to ask ourselves how the two nations then en- 
gaged have maintained their respective roles, and how time 
has dealt with the two forces which struggled here for mastery. 
The savage policy devised for Cornwallis, and by him com- 
mitted to Tarleton and Ferguson has been the policy of 
England ever since. She has stalked among the weak nations 
of the earth crushing them by conquest and chaining them 
to her imperial chariot for gain. 

And what of this republic which this battlefield of Guilford 



7^ Guilford Battle Ground, July 4, ipoo. 

Courthouse helped in such marked degree to usher in ? Has 
it not moved on from grace to grace, and from glory to glory? 
It has had its trials on land and sea. It has not left its own 
shores for conquest. It has not sought out the weak and 
marked them for absorption. Its example and fast growing 
influence have been a blessing to the nations and made 
America the hope of the world. The Great Republic, whose 
flag as a delivering and elevating power has now gone round 
the earth, cherishes no malice, but its citizens do not forget 
the England of the Revolution. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




petmiX^fe* 



